ISLAM-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE

92 Bethlehem there is no more than 10% of Christians compared to 62% in 1990: the expelled Christian inhabitants were replaced by Islamist Bedouins from the Hebron region. ISRAEL The only non-Arab and non-Muslim sta- te in the Middle East, Israel today has 350,000 Christian inhabitants out of 6.5 million, when in 1951 30,000 out of 1.5 million were counted: in absolute figures, this population has multiplied more than eleven times; in relative figures, in rela- tion to a strongly growing population, it has increased approximately from 3 to 6%. During the first 20 years that followed independence (1948-1968), many Israeli Christians of Arab culture emigrated. Today, on the contrary, there is an immi- gration of Palestinian Christians from the West Bank into Israel. Catholic and Or- thodox communities were also strengthe- ned in the 1990s by the arrival of many Christians from the former USSR who were allowed to immigrate because of fa- mily ties with Jews. The Vatican signed a concordat with Israel in 1998 and has just created a Jewish-speaking Catholic bishopric. JORDAN At the time of its creation in 1923, the Emirate of Transjordan counted only half a million inhabitants, including a few thou- sand Christian Bedouins, descendants of the Christianized tribes established in Arabia until the time of Mohammed. After 1948, this community grew for Palestinian Christian refugees from Jerusalem who had family and marriage ties since the 17th century. Today it represents about 10% of the total population. Since 1970, the Hashemite dynasty has been pro- tecting these Christians in order to appe- al to Western public opinion. One of the confidants of the late King Hussein, the journalist Rami el-Khouri, was a Christian. IRAQ In 1920 there were almost 10% Christians in Iraq (300,000 out of 3 million inhabi- tants), while today 3% (one million out of 24 million). One of the "founding acts" of Iraqi nationalism was the massacre, in 1932, of several thousand Assyrian Christians in the north of the country, of Aramaic language, and the expulsion of several tens of thousands of survivors. It is true that this community demanded the creation of an autonomous state. The first king, Faycal Ier, a romantic cha- racter from Hedjaz, died of sorrow and disgust a few months later after this ge- nocide, while his son Ghazi organized a parade to celebrate the event. The other Iraqi Christians, in particular the Chalde- an Catholics, have migrated 50%, or are holding an attitude of absolute submis- sion to Muslim power. Saddam Hussein had as Minister of Foreign Affairs a Ca- tholic, Tarik Aziz, today a prisoner of the Americans. Founder of the Baath, the Arab nationalist party of which Saddam was claimed to be a member, the Syrian Christian Michel Aflak was forced to con- vert to Islam when he took refuge in Iraq in the 1970s. SAUDI ARABIA Christianity and Judaism are forbidden in the kingdom, on the pretext that the Ara- bian Peninsula, the holy land of Islam, is similar to a mosque. Jews cannot obtain entry visas unless they have a diplomatic passport. Foreign Christians as diploma- ts, businessmen cannot celebrate their worship except in private. Proselytizing involves immediate expulsion if it is a fo- reigner and death if it is a Saudi or a resi- dent of a Muslim country.